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Ritter signs on to Secure Communities amid jeers and cheers

By Tim Hoover The Denver Post

Posted:
01/05/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

Updated:
01/05/2011 08:50:06 AM MST

An angry Ana Temu, 18, listens as Gov. Bill Ritter announces Tuesday that he will sign Colorado up with the Secure Communities program. Opponents shouted at the governor who leaves office next week after he made the announcement.
(AAron Ontiveros, The Denver Post
)

Immigrant rights groups called it "racist," but Gov. Bill Ritter on Tuesday decided to join 35 other states in signing onto the federal Secure Communities program, aimed at speeding deportations of illegal immigrants convicted of crimes.

"I made a decision that it was important to do this," Ritter told reporters today during a tense, impromptu press conference in which he was surrounded by opponents of the plan in a Capitol hallway.

"Immigration is this very difficult issue for us as a nation," said Ritter, who leaves office next week. "Most of what can or should be done has to be done at the national level. The federal government has utilized Secure Communities as one way of attempting to figure out what law violators there are that are illegal immigrants and make an effort to prioritize those in that group who represent the worst of the offenders."

Emotional opponents of the plan shouted angrily at him as he walked away from reporters.

"It's good you're out of office, a--hole!" one woman yelled.

Ritter, a Democrat who did not seek a second term, will be succeeded by Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper, also a Democrat and upon whose plate the issue would have fallen had Ritter not signed the agreement before leaving office.

Hickenlooper issued a statement Tuesday in support of the plan, and through a spokesman, confirmed he would not rescind the the agreement.

"This measure is intended to remove dangerous people from our communities," Hickenlooper said. "As long as there is no profiling, and as long as the program is implemented properly, our communities will be safer and the rights of our citizens will be protected."

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"We will help make this happen by working with ICE, the state Department of Public Safety, local law enforcement and counties that participate in the program."

Under the program, the fingerprints of people booked into jail are automatically run against a federal database maintained by U.S. Customs and Enforcement to check whether the offender has had contact with ICE and what his or her immigration status is. The system automatically notifies ICE and local officials if it's known whether someone booked into jail is an illegal immigrant.

ICE officials, however, ultimately decide whether someone convicted of a crime should be deported, and federal officials have said the program is aimed at the most serious of crimes. Immigrant rights groups, however, say the program has been an indiscriminate dragnet that has resulted in mass deportations.

"What this program ultimately will do is destroy community policing, driving victims and witnesses underground," said Hans Meyer, policy director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Meyer's group led a rally on the Capitol steps Tuesday against Ritter signing onto the effort. Speakers included clergy and representatives of Latino organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union .

Secure Communities "incentivizes racial profiling," said Jessie Ulibarri, a spokesman for the ACLU of Colorado.

But supporters of tougher laws on illegal immigration applauded the governor's decision.

"Secure Communities is an important step in combating illegal immigration and protecting public safety," said state Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch. "It means fewer illegal aliens with criminal histories and prior deportations will be recycled back into our communities."

Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, agreed: "This system will give law enforcement the tools to protect public safety without increasing their budgets."

In a statement, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, called the plan "draconian" and said he was "very disappointed" in Ritter.

But U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden, called the plan "a step in the right direction towards fixing our current immigration policy."

ICE's plans call for Secure Communities to be operational in every U.S. county by 2013, but some counties already have moved to implement the program. For this to take place, states have been signing agreements with ICE to allow counties to participate, and three counties in Colorado - Denver, El Paso and Arapahoe - have expressed interest in implementing the program.

Ultimately though, all U.S. counties will have to adopt the system, ICE officials said.

"Jurisdictions cannot opt out of Secure Communities as it is fundamentally an information-sharing program between federal (and state) partners," said Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman. "If a jurisdiction does not wish to activate on its scheduled date in the Secure Communities deployment plan, ICE will gladly work with them to address any concerns and determine appropriate action."

Proponents of tougher immigration restrictions have called on Ritter for months to sign an agreement with ICE, but based on concerns by immigrant rights organizations, his office had been working with ICE officials to get an agreement with special exceptions for Colorado. These included an exception for domestic violence cases, a requirement of transparent data reporting, a requirement that the program only be used for serious crimes and an opt-out provision for local communities.

But the agreement Ritter's administration signed with ICE only clearly includes one of these provisions - that ICE will provide quarterly statistics to Colorado on the numbers of Secure Communities database searches that are run, the results of them, the number of detainees prosecuted and removed from the country and their nationalities.

A 2006 Colorado law requires police to report to ICE anyone who is arrested and suspected of being an illegal immigrant, unless it is a case of domestic violence. The agreement Ritter's office signed with ICE on Tuesday "acknowledges" this law but does not specifically make an exception for domestic violence cases.

State Department of Public Safety officials said their understanding is that there is no exception for domestic violence cases, though ICE is unlikely to make these offenses a high priority for deportation.

"Anybody who's booked into jail is going to be run against the database," said Lance Clem, spokesman for the department.

Rusnok also said ICE's top priority is to go after the most dangerous of offenders, those convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping and other "level one" offenses.

According to ICE statistics, from Oct. 27, 2008, when the program first started in a Texas county, through Sept. 30 of 2010, a period that includes data for nine states in the program, there have been 4.2 million offenders whose fingerprints have been run through Secure Communities.

Of those, 343,829 had matches in the ICE system, and of those, 64,072 were deported. There were 14,020 deported with convictions for level one offenses, the most serious, and 25,619 convicted with level two offenses that included non-violent felonies, property crimes and three or more misdemeanors. Only 7,259 were deported for convictions on level three offenses such as minor drug offenses or two misdemeanors.

Meanwhile, however, there 17,174 people deported who were not convicted of crimes, but who still had entered the country illegally.

Top priority

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say the top priority for the Secure Communities program is to go after the most dangerous of offenders: those convicted of murder, rape, kidnapping and other "level one" offenses.

4.2 million

Offenders whose fingerprints have been run through the program since 2008

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